Talent and/or Popularity - What Does it Take to Be a Superstar

Egon Franck and Stephan Nuesch

No 74, Working Papers from University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics (ISU)

Abstract: We show that both talent and popularity significantly contribute to stars’ market values in German soccer. The talent-versus-popularity controversy on the sources of stardom goes back to Rosen (1981) and Adler (1985). All attempts to resolve the controversy empirically face the difficulty of accurately identifying talent. In professional sports, rank-order tournaments help in ascertaining talent. Analyzing a team production setting, we make use of a large number of performance indicators to estimate a player’s talent according to his contribution to the team’s winning chances.

Keywords: superstars; soccer; talent; popularity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J44 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-spo
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/iso/ISU_WPS/74_ISU_full.pdf This Version: 2009 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: TALENT AND/OR POPULARITY: WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A SUPERSTAR? (2012)
Working Paper: Talent and/or Popularity - What Does it Take to Be a Superstar (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iso:wpaper:0074

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